I have never been so pissed off at a movie. I've seen bad movies. I've seen bad movies just for the sake of watching a bad movie. I feel like I need an apology from everyone who made this movie. IN WRITING!
Why is it so bad? Let's start with the most annoying part first. The puns. It's a hour and 40 minute movie and they never stop with the "time" puns. I don't have time, can you spare a minute, time zones, time keepers, all the time in the world, and on and on and on.
Here's the story. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) is a poor guy and since your life force (or time) is the only source of currency, he has about a day to live unless he makes more time. F*** EVEN I'M DOING THE STUPID PUNS! ARRGH!
One day a rich guy goes into the ghetto where Salas lives (time zone 12). He wants to die because he's over 100 years old and sick of living as a gorgeous 25 year old who has so much time he will probably never die. My a***h*** bleeds for his plight. Instead of getting himself killed my gangsters, called minutemen.... yes they are called minutemen....he gives his time to Salas with his only parting words are written on the window, "don't waste my time."
Ok I have to stop here for a minute. I want you to count how many time puns I just made in that last paragraph. Go ahead. Count it. This is what happens in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie! And oh believe me I'm not saying a bunch more that happens in that same fifteen minutes! "I'll give you a half hour so you can have a nice lunch." "That'll be four hours for a cup of coffee?" I WANTED TO SET FIRE TO THE THEATER!
So naturally all the things Will does with that time attracts the police's attention. Oh, did I say police? I mean the timekeepers. *ahem* And of course they are corrupt and want to kill Will. Why? Hell if I know. But that doesn't stop the movie from shoehorning in a subplot! Oh no. The timekeeper trying to catch Will knew Will's father. He was some kind of Robin Hood type. Stealing time from the rich and giving it to the poor. I like his father. He sounds like a good and noble man. He just might be the best character in the entire movie. BECAUSE HE ISN'T IN THE MOVIE! I'm not kidding. No pictures, no name, nothing... I was completely unaware Will had a father until the cop said he knew his father. I'm not going to call him a timekeeper. F*** that!
Which brings me to my second complaint. The writing SUCKS! There's symbolism, there's foreshadowing, and then there's this damn movie. Symbolism and foreshadowing are supposed to be subtle things. Things we aren't supposed to think about but in hindsight we recognize it and go, "oh yeah." IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE A SHOVEL UPSIDE OUR HEADS! Look no further than the title of the movie. "In Time." Throughout the movie we see a mission. With a nice green neon sign reading, "out of time". Get it. Get the joke there. Do you see the pun? Do you? DO YOU SEE IT. LOOK! IT'S A NEON SIGN! IT SAYS "OUT OF TIME!" BUT LATER WILL GETS LOTS OF TIME AND GIVES IT TO THE MISSION! NOW THEY HAVE TIME! THEY ARE "IN TIME!"
Or how about the foreshadowing of saying Will's father died in a fight. You see, they don't fight like we do. No. Time is transfered just by grabbing someone by the wrist. (That's really not an efficient way to keep one from dieing.) So, to fight, they lock wrists and the clocks on their arm runs down. Whoever can suck out the life force of their opponent first, wins. Just lovely. Guess what happens to the minutemen gangsters? Can you guess? Every twist and turn in this movie is telegraphed so poorly I swear a seventh grader wrote the script.
How about the message of the movie? That of course being a oh so lovely lecture on Social Darwinism. How the rich get to live forever because they are strong and get to suck the life out of the lower classes because they don't have much. In what might be the only classy thing this movie did was not including Queen's song "Who Wants To Live Forever." Instead they go with the horrendous line, "for few to be immortal, many must die." I will simply leave it at that. No doubt you can hear the hampster fall off the wheel. The mouse is losing his cheese. The screw is in the ball. In other words, THIS IF F***ING STUPID!
But I saved the best piece of stupid for last. You see, when you are born, there's a glowing clock already on your arm. It says you have one year. The clock starts to run down once you turn 25 years old. So, nobody ever ages over the age of 25. How does any of this work. SHUT UP. Will says he doesn't "have time" to think about these things. So we are just meant to accept that this is how this world works. You're born with a clock in your arm. It doesn't do anything for 25 years. Once you hit 25 it jolts your body and starts ticking. THIS IS PERFECTLY NORMAL! So people go to factories and make "time machines" that can collect your life energy so it can be stored in a bank.
Can you see why I hated this movie? Life energy slowly bleeding away until death. That's a great metaphor for the whole viewing experience.
Poll time. Talk amongst your friends. Which of these makes the least amount of sense?
1) Fighting exploding birds with coat hangers
2) Dracula fighting werewolves with a holy hand grenade
3) A psychic timetraveling demonic rabbit predicting the end of the world
4) Life energy being not only real, but measured in terms of minutes and used as currency in a world where everyone is essentially soul stealing vampires.
Bonus points if you can guess which movies these are. #4 is of course "In Time"
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